My Kingdom for an Artist comments

I would agree with Max... I'd be much more interested in providing art to a project that has something to show for itself. Especially with a developer that has a proven track record. Which is sort of a catch-22, but not completely. And my interest lies in more than just art, so I would also be motivated by a "voice" in the game's creation ... where I can provide ideas, ask for special features, help form the game more than visually.

Max Inc., I would love to have you work on my tennis game. Please e-mail me at tennis@karlbecker.com if you'd like to be on the team.
You can find more information about the game here, including a playable version whose media you can dig in and replace with your own art to see it reflected in the game immediately.http://www.karlbecker.com/tennis/

I've got the no site and no engine points covered... so would you be interested in helping?
I would really appreciate it.

I would also like to invite you, Falcon, to participate in the creation of KTA Tennis. Artists have opportunity for input on all aspects of the game, from its gameplay to menus to whatever the heck else. If interested, please contact me.

funkboy Wrote:I would also like to invite you, Falcon, to participate in the creation of KTA Tennis. Artists have opportunity for input on all aspects of the game, from its gameplay to menus to whatever the heck else.

KTA Tennis was originally a uDevGame 2003 entry.
If I recall I sent Karl a teenage pixel artist who was "just dying to get into game dev", but apparently Karl didn't get back to him, I think because someone else stepped up to the plate, and if I'm remembering my uDG'04 history, dropped the ball. Little Brian wannabe was sour for months over this.

So suggestion for you Karl, if you really really really want artists to work on the game, you make it so that either a layered photoshop file, or a file sequence can be easily pulled into the game for testing, without ever restarting the application. If you are still using transtalk, the file sequence bit shouldn't be a problem, the PS layers might be. Have you stepped up to Cocoa yet? I knew you were thinking of that a while back.

Now for some general comments to this thread.

Everyone's points to date are valid, as the world of art is filled with as many kinds of people as there are in every kind of walk of life on earth.

There are sites full of game artists....for PC mods, Garage Games, etc. Some of them work for free, some of them charge and have previous game credits, many many more than many of them are flakes who are all pumped to talk about what they want to do, but NEVER get passed that.

I've become so jaded by contact with these people, to the point of not re-establishing my website so I don't have to listen to and respond to anymore of this BS blown up my back side.

These are the same kind of people who talk crap at a job interview about what great and experienced designers they are and people like me end up having to train them, fix every little printing or kerning bug they have and stay to 3AM to finish the workload they couldn't handle.

The game developer/artist relationship is a rare chemical reaction, and full of its own rewards and pitfalls. There are so many different kinds of artists, with different skills and motivations, that just looking for "sprite designer" turns off anyone who really wants to design maps, a texture artist or cutting edge layout artist may becoming highly frustrated having to learn to make low polygon models with an alien tool, a storyboard artist doesn't want to deal with the tedious work of actually conceptualizing the look of every character and object, etc, etc.

That is why most games (and movies and even comic books) require teams of people, handling several specialized tasks that make up for the weakness of other people on the team. The writer provides the spark that inspires the guy that details the characters, that boosts the imaginative effort of the guy making the storyboards, and the art director nails down the absolute direction that this crazy train is running.

When a programmer says "no thats not what I was looking for" after the artist has spent hours doing something, in the artists mind this occurs "Well you're a friggin code monkey, what do you know about design and aesthetics!".

In the non game world I've experienced the great thrill of getting started on a client's project, wanting to give them something unique and wonderful, only to be told after 20 to 80 hours of work "we want it to look just like our competitors work", "thats not what i want at all, here's a cut and paste idea I have, do this", which totaly kills the whole point of being in a creative industry, and wasting all those years learning design in college. In the game world its "You know make it look like this game from super nintendo" or just a vague comment like "something that looks cool".

Two years ago I came here as an artist, I wanted a tool I could use to make games with on my Mac, there was none, I was told "progam it yourself". Now two years later I've not done more than 40 hours of artwork (that I can remember doing) and I'm totaly burned out on designing a User Interface (something I've never done before) for an application to make games, a project I'm dedicated too, but I've lost the original inspiration and ingenuity born of neccessity, as well as any desire to deal with the general public who can not follow written instructions repeated to them three or more times ( if you are reading this you know who you are! )

I'm dissapointed that the Inkubator project still ignores the artist friendly application need and is taking the "go to hell in a handbasket of code" approach to a community project.

If there is no tool to quickly test art in a game environment, what artists are going to jump aboard, and how will artists new to game dev prove they can work on games? In David's early build of Chopper I changed his helicopter to a Karp (from a picture on the net) in under 4 minutes and had a fish flying around shooting things. He provided the source for Chopper editor to Inkubator over nine months ago, and still Inkubator is sitting in the "Let's reinvent the wheel. What is the wheel?" phase.

Here we are at uDG 2004, and once again there are developers who can't find reliable artists, there's no "game portfolio" section, there's no "udg art of the past" resource, hell there's no resources at all, and there is still no "art magnet" that draws in the noob, and makes them feel they have a shot in hell of even getting their feet wet in this crazy world of game dev.

Sorry for being grim, its been a rough two years and I haven't yet seen that things are improving in the designer/artists/game-developer-on-a-Mac arena. Maybe someone has a happy "i used to be a graphic designer suffering QuarkXpress burnout, until I met gamedeveloper X who made me see the light" story they can email me.

igame3d Wrote:KTA Tennis was originally a uDevGame 2003 entry.
If I recall I sent Karl a teenage pixel artist who was "just dying to get into game dev", but apparently Karl didn't get back to him, I think because someone else stepped up to the plate, and if I'm remembering my uDG'04 history, dropped the ball. Little Brian wannabe was sour for months over this.

Hmm, this is a surprise to me. I checked my iChat logs and couldn't find any mention of this, nor do I recall it in my mind. Regardless, maybe I did drop the ball here and let an artist slip through my hands, though I don't remember it. If I did, I should be down on myself for that.

I'd like to respond to more thought sin this thread later - for now, I gotta go move boxes!